“Lilla Turen” means “a little journey” in Swedish. Through this website, we go on a small journey to explore the future form of “learning” with the inspirations from “education” in Nordic countries.

What made us go on a journey?

It is predicted that “the 65% of today’s students will be employed in jobs that don’t exist yet” or “AI will take away the human’s jobs”. In the near future, not only the jobs but also the way we work might be in a totally different situation.

As the competence needed in the society is changing, the education in Japan is focusing more and more on “active learning” or “self-motivated learning and cooperations with others”. It will be more important to find a question, not to find an answer quickly to the given question.

Meanwhile, it seems very challenging to cater such a big change in the mindset only in the education at school. Home, community, the society as a whole need to change at the same time and cater the change all together.

In the time of uncertainty, what could we do so that our children, or even we ourselves, can steer the life as they pursued? That was the question where I started thinking about the future form of education, or “learning”.

Why Nordics?

I got interested in the Nordic education from the experience of studying in Sweden many years ago.

What was surprising to me was that, in the Faculty of Government and Politics where I studied, they had only one subject at a month, one lecture a week. The teacher would basically assigned to read a textbook of hundreds of pages at home, and the lecture would be where you discuss with other students based on what you learned at home.

At the exam, four hours were given for one subject. You would be given some themes and need to discuss your idea with what you learned from the lecture.

This was a big difference from education in Japan, where I would learn from teachers and take an exam with the memorization. Furthermore, what was surprising for me was the meeting with Swedish people, who seemed to learn for themselves with self-motivation, draw a life as they wished and creatively realize it. Also, the form of democracy you could observe in a daily life, people discussing social issues at school or dormitory, to pursue together a better future.

It has always been somewhere inside, and it made me explore the “education” in Nordic countries.

Nordic society -many triggers which let self-motivated learning and communications among people

As I visited Nordic countries recently, I observed that it is a place where there are many triggers that let people’s self learning and communications: not only at school, but also in the society as a whole. And it seemed to play a great role in the education.

The intention of this website is not to say “let’s just follow those systems and practices”. The society works different and the preconditions are different. Also, some people that I met there told me that there are some problems in the current education system.

Rather, we try to introduce the daily moments, how the places are designed, the inspirations from the life and etc. With those inspirations, we try to find some tips to think about the future form of “learning”.

As it is a small journey, please join us with a small backpack, not a heavy suitcase!